Even the Brits don't know much about their men's basketball team, which sneaked into the Olympic as host

Pop Mensah- Bonsu of Great Britain speaks to the media during a basketball press conference on July 25, 2012 in London, England.Photo by
Hannah Johnston

LONDON - Nana Papa Yaw Dwene Mensah-Bonsu smirked shortly after taking his seat on the riser. A journeyman British basketball player - “More clubs than Jack Nicklaus,” as the Daily Telegraph put it recently - Mensah-Bonsu has shortened his first name to just “Pops,” but on Wednesday he noticed even that was too challenging.The nameplate on the riser read, “Pop.”Britain is 43rd among the 82 countries included in FIBA’s world rankings, 19 spots below the Canadian men, but as tournament host it received a special exemption to compete in the London Olympics. The hope is the team will use that exemption to capture the hearts and minds of a few more British sports fans, including the ones who write nameplates.“I feel like we hold the future of British basketball in our hands,” Mensah-Bonsu said. “It’s a fairly unknown sport in this country. I feel like it has a chance to excel in the country, and I think that with some success in these Olympics, the notoriety will come, the funding will come, the fan support will come.”Britain has not appeared in an Olympic men’s basketball tournament since 1948, when it staged a scaled-down version of the Summer Games after the Second World War. The team did not win a game that year.Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng is the brightest star on the British roster and, as its only active NBA player, he is also its most expensive. The 27-year-old put off having surgery to repair ligament damage in his wrist in January, and the extra insurance for him to play at the Olympics will reportedly cost British basketball more than $400,000.“Much as I wanted to please Chicago and Chicago Bulls fans, I just hope they understand if I don’t play in these Olympics, it will haunt me for the rest of my life,” Deng told ESPN.com earlier this month. Mensah-Bonsu has NBA experience, including two brief stints with the Toronto Raptors, but he has been playing for Besiktas, in Turkey. Andrew Lawrence, a guard, was a senior at the College of Charleston, a Division I school in South Carolina, this year.“In terms of the money that’s funded within basketball at the high school level to the college level, and then obviously to the NBA level, there’s really not a comparison [between the U.S. and the U.K.],” Lawrence said. “I think, potentially, we have a lot of talent in England. It’s just not harnessed always in basketball.”And the Olympics, he said, is where that hope begins.“We’re confident in ourselves, and we’re confident in the group we have that we can make some noise in this tournament,” Lawrence said. The tournament is comprised of 12 teams, divided into two groups of six. Canada missed its chance to qualify last year, months after FIBA, the sport’s governing body, granted the host British special exemptions for both the men’s and women’s teams.“People can make what they want about the automatic qualification,” said British coach Chris Finch, who is also an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets. “We’ve had to earn our way here. We’ve met every marker that FIBA put down for us to achieve.”The top four teams from each group will advance. Britain will not have to face the top-ranked United States in the group stage, but it will face Spain, the reigning European champions and the second-best team in the FIBA rankings.Australia (ranked ninth), China (10th), Russia (11th) and Brazil (13th) are the other four teams Britain will try to upset. (“Honestly, I’m not in the business of making any predictions,” Finch said.) Some players in the United States - including two-time Olympian Dwyane Wade - have begun to wonder aloud whether players should be paid to play at the Olympics. It was a question posed again on Wednesday, not long after Mensah-Bonsu had settled in behind his misspelled nameplate, a relative unknown in his own country.“I’d pay to play at the Olympics,” he said with a smile.sfitzgerald@nationalpost.com

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